High school students breed endangered frog
STAMFORD — An orange and black male frog not much longer than an inch carries a tiny tadpole up to the top of a tropical plant and places it inside a well of water to await its first meal: an unfertilized egg from the mother frog.
It’s a process that typically plays out in a small section of the Colombian rainforest, but recently it happened inside a Stamford classroom.
The tadpole is now a froglet and it lives with two other tadpoles and the mother and father — all of a critically endangered species of frog — inside a tank in a corner of science teacher Nick DeFelice’s classroom at the private King School.
How they arrived is a multi-year story that involves numerous students and DeFelice. Along the way, there were challenges and uncertainties, but no aspect of the process to successfully breed an endangered amphibian was more up to chance than the gender of the frogs the school received by mail.
The first endangered frog — of the species Oophaga lehmanni, or red-banded dart frog — arrived at King from Colombia in February. Oophaga lehmanni is part of the group of frogs in the family Dendrobatidae commonly known as poison dart frogs. Their toxicity comes from their diet, so the ones in captivity are not poisonous, DeFelice said.
Students studied it and seemed fairly certain it was a male: it sat high in the tank and was calling in a certain way, “a low chirp” as DeFelice described it.
The second frog arrived in late summer, acted differently and was much quieter.
But it wasn’t until DeFelice, chair of the science department at King, thought of doing some tank clean-up that it was clear the gamble paid off.
DeFelice was about to cut a flower inside the tank where the two frogs were living and asked former student Paige Baird if maybe he should leave it be. She said she liked it.
At that moment, DeFelice tilted the flower and noticed eggs inside as an astonished Baird looked on.
“That was the moment we knew,” said DeFelice.
Then in September, DeFelice peeked inside a bromeliad plant where water was collected and saw movement. He took a closer look and spotted tadpoles.
“I had a moment,” DeFelice said, as he sat in his empty classroom at night realizing he and King students had successfully bred an endangered species of frog. The next day, he called one particularly involved student — Duncan Baird, Paige’s brother — and told him to com eby the tank to see for himself. Like his sister, Duncan was mesmerized.
“I will never as a teacher forget Duncan’s face and Paige’s face,” DeFelice said
last week sitting in his classroom, the tank nearby, reflecting on the result of years of planning, research and hope.
So far, he and his students have spotted three tadpoles in the tank, including the froglet; they’ve been dubbed Viking 1, Viking 2 and Viking 3, the same moniker as King’s mascot.
Last week at the school, when students got together for a short 30 minute period dedicated to school clubs, the Frog Conservation Project club met inside DeFelice’s class.
Among the students was sophomore Duncan Baird, who said he has always had an interest in frogs.
“They’re cute, they’re funny, they look nice,” he said.
His sister, who was instrumental in the entire process, was also a big inspiration for him, he said.
“I really love frogs and I really love conserving nature as a whole,” he said.
Nily Genger, another student member of the Frog Conservation Project, said
she became interested in participating because of DeFelice.
“He’s always talking about these frogs and is so excited and passionate about it and, like, I figured if he was excited about it, there had to be something really cool — so I decided to join and it is really cool,” she said.
Breeding the frogs was a process that took about four years, starting when two former King students, Nic Perez and James Hilton, submitted a proposal to the school and received approval and funding to construction a vivarium, essentially a tank designed to act as a natural habitat for an animal or living specimen.
Designing and building the 250-gallon tank was up to King students, however. They planned every aspect of the elaborate structure, which can produce fog and rain to simulate the Colombian rainforest where the frogs are from. The plants inside the vivarium are all from that region of the world as well.
“The students had their hand in every measurement and every design,” said DeFelice, who has led the effort.
“The reason we chose this species is because they’re a very, very challenging breed,” DeFelice said, describing the endangered species as “temperamental.” While commonly called “poison dart frogs” or “poison frogs,” their toxicity comes from their diet, so the ones in captivity are not poisonous, DeFelice said.
The amphibians came from vendor Tesoros de Colombia, or Colombian Treasures, which DeFelice was familiar with from a frog convention he attended in New York a few years ago. He met someone there from the organization who had an interest in Oophaga lehmanni and had a captive-bred lineage of them, DeFelice said. That was the person who sent the school its first frog. The second frog came from a different hobbyist connected with Tesoros, DeFelice said.
The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora and the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources have classified the Oophaga lehmanni as “critically endangered,” threatened by the loss of habitat and the illegal pet trade. They are endem ictoas mall section of western Colombia in the Anchicaya River Valley and are known among frogs for their special form of parental care.
The male starts the process by finding a moist area where the female can lay eggs. Typically, a female frog of this particular species can lay between three and 10 eggs. The male then fertilizes them. Once they develop into tadpoles, they find their way onto the male’s back, and he transports
them to a collection of water, typically inside of a bromeliad plant.
Then, he calls the female frog to come and lay an unfertilized egg in the water with the tadpole for the newborn to eat. That’s how the frogs got their name, as oophaga roughly translates to “egg” and lehmanni means “eater.” The frogs typically have a life span of about eight to 10 years.
Now that they have a system in place and proven results, DeFelice said he’d like to reach out to zoos and aquariums to potentially house some of the frogs that will come from the classroom, as well as potentially trade with them so that the King School vivarium has a more diverse genetic stock.
In the meantime, the next step is caring for the recently-born froglets. They can stay in the tank with their parents for four months, DeFelice said, but then it’s time they move on.
“After four months, they could start competing for territory with the parents,” he said. “And we want to keep the parents happy because they’re doing a great job now.”
So, another smaller tank was built to house the offspring once it’s tim eto move them.
The frogs have been a hit at the school as word has gotten out. They’ve been a particularly welcome addition for DeFelice, who has gotten a chance to study them up close and learn their personalities. The parent frogs, which students have dubbed Peter Parker and Mary Jane after the Spider-Man characters, each have their own behavior and seem to be getting along.
“Last night I was here and while I was going around sweeping, I looked over and they were nestled next to each other,” DeFelice said.